Nothing M-rated in this chapter, unless you have a weak stomach when it comes to agricultural fertilizers. :)

Chapter Eight

There was so much information, just in that short piece of CCTV footage, to unpack, sort, analyse and file away and that was just the first of many hundreds of such pieces. Sherlock could not allow himself to contemplate the enormity of the task before him since to do so would have proved too daunting. He needed to take each step as it came. Right now, it was this piece of film that required his attention. He needed to think. And in order to think he needed to be horizontal. He did all his best thinking lying flat on his back.

Also, he must attend to his damaged hand. The impact with the wall had proved a great deal more traumatic than he'd anticipated but then, he'd never punched a solid brick wall before. The amount of bruising developing across the back of his hand, coupled with the degree of swelling, did not bode well. He thought he might have broken one – maybe more – of his metacarpals, possibly the second and third. He needed some clarity.

Sherlock reached out with his good hand and extinguished the lights in No 23. Then, turning away from the front door, he stepped forward into a dark recess. When this building had been a whole house, this recess had been part of the hallway that led to the rest of the dwelling but now it was just a dead end…or so it appeared. Feeling to his right – again with his left hand, since his right was definitely out of the equation - he located a handle and turned it, opening a narrow wooden access door and stepping through into what used to be No 24. It was here that he had hidden, the night Mary Watson came to find him, the night he decided to take her case against Charles Augustus Magnussen.

With difficulty, because his muscle memory was confused by his use of the wrong hand, he fumbled for the main service board to the side of No 24's front door and switched on the lights.

This half of his bolthole was, in shape and size, the mirror image of the half he had just left but there the similarities ended. Before Sherlock became the proud owner of the Lie of Leinster Gardens, someone – perhaps the Clarence House Cannibal, he had no idea – had fitted No 24 out as a little Pied a Terre. It was quite basic but it contained all the essentials – a camping cot and sleeping bag, a small fridge, a kettle, a square ceramic sink with a cold tap, and a fully flushing toilet. There was also a single bar electric heater attached to the wall above the bed. On the floor, between the end of the bed and the fridge, was a hold-all which – true to its name – held all that Sherlock could possibly need in order to hole up here for a couple of days, at least. As boltholes went, this one was just perfect.

Sherlock made his way along the narrow room to the sink, put the plug in the plughole and turned on the tap. He watched as the water level rose to the required depth then turned off the tap. Slowly, gingerly, he lowered his injured hand into the ice-cold water, pressing his palm flat to the bottom of the sink, so the back of his hand was completely submerged. He closed his eyes and let the coldness of the water penetrate his flesh. At first, it felt quite soothing but then he became aware of two sharp points of pain just south of his knuckles and the pain just went on getting worse. Hissing through his teeth, Sherlock pulled his hand out of the water. Well, that settled it. Two metatarsals, at the very least cracked - possibly broken.

A good Trauma doctor, by the name of John Watson, had once told Sherlock that the quickest and most reliable way to diagnose a trauma as either a fracture or a soft tissue injury was to apply heat or cold to the site. If the pain got better, it was soft tissue. If it got worse, it was a fracture.

Damn, thought Sherlock.

He sat down on the camping cot and reached for the hold-all, lifting it up onto the cot beside him and taking out a small hand towel. He used it to carefully but thoroughly dry his hand. Then, from inside one of the end pockets of the bag, he pulled out a roll of kinesiology tape and a pair of scissors – right-handed scissors. So, this was going to be awkward but he would just have to grin and bear it. At least while he was doing this, he couldn't spare a thought for anything else so he should be grateful for small mercies.

Gripping the roll between his knees, Sherlock peeled off a strip of tape about twelve inches long and cut it from the roll. When using the scissors, the pain in his hand was intense but he pushed through to get the job done. Next, he cut four inches off that strip and stuck it onto the roll for safe keeping. Now, he made a short incision down the middle of each of the two ends of the longer strip of tape so that it resembled an elongated 'X', then cut two of the 'arms' down the middle again, so now there were four 'arms' and two 'legs'. He applied that strip to the back of his hand and wrapped the 'legs' of the 'X' around his wrist to secure it and then, one at a time, he stretched out the four 'arms' in the shape of a fan, over the back of his hand, smoothing the tape down so that it adhered to his skin, supporting and stabilising all the metacarpal bones. Now the tape was in place, his hand began to feel more comfortable. But he wasn't done yet. Taking the shorter piece of tape, he cut it all the way down the middle to make two thinner strips and stretched each one of those laterally across the back of his hand, to form a 'frame'. Task complete, Sherlock rested his hand across his chest, leant back against the wall, closed his eyes and took a few moments to let things settle.

No longer distracted by the requirements of his injury, Sherlock's mind returned to the folder of video files. He was in no doubt that every minute, if not every second, of Eurus's life had been recorded and stored in that folder, a permanent record of a lifetime spent imprisoned, tormented and exploited. And in solitary confinement, too, a technique long recognised as a form of torture and banned outright, for juveniles, by the United Nations. How on earth had she survived? Had she imagined she might someday be released? Or escape, perhaps? Was that what kept her going?

This spoke not only of a superior mind but also enormous bravery, resilience and fortitude.

Sherlock cut short his ruminations. There were things he still needed to do before he could surrender himself completely to thought.

He dipped into the bag again, took out his phone charger and plugged it into one of a row of power sockets next the end of the bed, one of which was already occupied by the fridge plug. Back into the bag and out came a blister strip of pain-killers. He pressed out two and, getting up from the cot, went to the sink, put his lips to the tap and sucked in some water then pushed the tablets into his mouth, one at a time, and swallowed them. While he was at the tap, he thought he may as well put the kettle on so he emptied out all the stale water from the last time he was here, refilled it and switched it on.

Fishing back in the bag, he pulled out a Pot Noodle - Chicken Korma flavour. He wrinkled his nose. They were all an acquired taste so one was pretty much as good as any. He tore off the lid and stood the pot on top of the fridge, next to the kettle, ready to receive the boiling water. The time it took for the kettle to boil was spent putting all his bits and pieces back in their assigned places in the bag, so he could find them all quickly, next time. Then he removed his coat and hung it on the back of the access door and unrolled the sleeping bag.

The kettle rumbled and clicked off and, pouring boiling water into the pot noodle pot, he picked up a fork from the top of the fridge and began to absent-mindedly stir the contents while making his way back to the cot. There was a whole host of unanswered questions queuing up inside his brain and clamouring for attention. Like, how did Rudi persuade all the staff at Sherrinford to keep schtum about a five-year-old child being held in a top security psychiatric institution? Didn't any of them think this was itself insane? But first, he needed to refuel. Sitting down again, he leant against the wall and began to eat his 'supper', clearing his mind of all thought.

ooOoo

Sherlock's eyes snapped open and he lay still in the pitch darkness. The only sound he could hear was the humming of the fridge motor and the fading rumble of the Underground train that had just passed under the 'house'. He reached for his phone, still attached to the charger. Quarter past six in the morning. Had he been asleep? Most likely. There was no way he'd spent the entire night in his Mind Palace. But the time he had spent had been fruitful.

The single most important fact he had established was that five-year-old Eurus wasn't anything like Mycroft had described her. She was not a cold, emotionless psychopath but a frightened little girl, torn away from the only life she had ever known, albeit a rather chaotic one, and thrown into that austere, futuristic dungeon, surrounded by glass and watched, constantly. And her only human contact, it would appear, was her evil uncle. Sherlock had seen for himself how the tiny child had stood up to the tall, imposing man. Obviously, she knew him as a member of her close family so perhaps she didn't fear him as she might have a complete stranger but he was still an adult and he was obviously in charge. Maybe she didn't yet know that he was evil. Perhaps she thought he might be her saviour. But, either way, there was nothing deviant about her response to this bizarre situation. She was facing up to adversity with great bravery, in very abnormal circumstances.

Sherlock felt he needed to get to know the real Eurus, not the Frankenstein's monster created in Rudi's twisted imagination and fed to the world via his mouthpiece, Mycroft. Perhaps he could learn more by watching some of those home movies - the early ones, before Eurus's fall from grace.

He also needed to learn more about the family dynamic in those early years, the years he didn't remember. Why were his parents apparently so in awe of Eurus, even before she led poor Victor to his death? And why had they been so eager to hand over two of their three children into Rudi's care? Not just Eurus but Mycroft, too, through his guardianship?

It was obvious to Sherlock that he needed to speak to the one person who was around through all of the turmoil but a shadowy figure, lurking in the background, not one of the key players - although he was clearly key to someone. In Eurus's hour of need, she had called out for this person.

'I want…my duh…daddy!'

Sherlock needed to talk to his father.

ooOoo

Siger Holmes was a creature of habit. He had a daily routine and he liked to keep to it. So, at 10 am precisely, he would step through the front door of his Sussex home to take his daily ten thousand steps through the fields, woods and lanes of his downland neighbourhood. He always took the same route, more or less, with a few seasonal variations, such as to avoid muddy fields in the Winter. His pace was steady, not brisk. He liked to take his time, to absorb the sights, sounds and smells of the surrounding countryside and to revel in the large and small changes brought about by the influences of weather and season.

Two hours was the average length of time it took him to complete his daily exercise but if he could spin it out to three hours, with the occasional pause to lean on a gate and admire a pleasing vista; or gaze up at the buzzards and red kites that were now a common feature in the skies over his home; or stop for a chat with any random stranger or familiar face he might meet along the way, he would do so. This was his time and a welcome break from the demands of his wife, whom he loved very much but of whom he would be the first to admit that she could be extremely high maintenance.

People who lived in towns thought of the countryside as some sort of rural idyll but Siger knew that this was as much an industrial landscape as were the towns and cities themselves. These fields were factories engaged in the production of food and there was always evidence of that to be found.

In the Spring, when the green shoots of each year's yield began to show themselves above the ground, the farm workers would be out and about in their giant machines, spraying the crops with insecticides or fertilizers, chemicals to make them grow faster, chemicals to slow down the growth rate. Some of these fields would be sprayed up to twenty times in a growing season, to keep them on the straight and narrow, en route from farm to table.

In high Summer, the downs would resound to the sound of the combine harvesters, trundling up and down the fields, with their twenty-foot wide headers mowing down the cereal crop, passing it through the threshing process and diverting the grain to the storage hopper whilst spitting out the straw on the ground behind. Siger would often pause by a gate or stile to watch this process. An engineer by profession, machinery of any kind intrigued him. But he found the co-ordinated ballet between the various pieces of farm equipment quite mesmerising. When the combine swung out its long dispensing tube and the tractor and trailer came up alongside, to catch the grain as it poured out from the full hopper, without even pausing in the process of harvesting the field, Siger would marvel at the ingenuity of mankind that could conceive of such a miracle.

And, in the wake of the harvester would come the flail to sweep up all the straw into long, thin ribbon-like ribs across the land, in preparation for the baler that would scoop up the straw, roll or compact it into a cylindrical or rectangular bale, bind it with twine, wire, strapping or net and dump it out on the ground again, ready for the next actor in the play – the fork – to collect up all the bales and load them onto yet another trailer which would carry them away. Siger had often stood and watched as a field of standing wheat, barley or rye was reduced to an empty expanse of stubble in less than half a day.

In the Autumn, the land so recently stripped of its annual yield would be raked with a harrow, to break up the surface without disrupting the soil structure. It would then be spread with fertilizer, left for a week or so, harrowed again and then reseeded with next year's crop. If that wasn't factory farming, Siger didn't know what was.

Only in the Winter was the land left relatively unmolested and, even then, there were crops like sugar beet to be harvested or just left in the field to be grazed by the ubiquitous flocks of sheep for which the Sussex Downs were world famous – yet another crop, of an animal variety.

When Siger Holmes wasn't marvelling at the industry of the local farming folk, he used his daily perambulations to indulge his favourite of all pastimes – deep thought.

Strolling along a narrow lane, bounded on both sides by a tall, thick hedge, from which he could hear a cacophony of twittering birds as the local hedge sparrow population indulged in a spot of territorial squabbling, he rounded a slight bend and was surprised to see a familiar figure standing in the road, smoking a cigarette.

'Sherlock?' he exclaimed, increasing his pace and striding forward. 'What are you doing here?'

Sherlock turned to the sound of his father's voice and dropped the almost finished cigarette onto the road, grinding it out with his toe.

'I came to see you,' he replied, with a smile, opening his arms to receive and reciprocate his father's hug. 'Hello, Pa,' he said, and held his father's embrace for a fraction longer than perhaps he normally would.

'Hello, dear boy, it's lovely to see you,' his father enthused. 'But what are you doing loitering in the lane? Why not come up to the house?'

'I wanted to surprise you,' Sherlock replied.

'Well, you certainly achieved that. Come on, then, your mother will be so pleased to see you,' Siger exclaimed, turning back in the direction from which he had just come.

'No, Pa,' Sherlock insisted. 'I don't want you to miss out on your walk. I know how much you enjoy them and I certainly wouldn't want to break the continuity of your 'ten thousand steps' a day. I'll walk with you.'

'Oh, very well, then but…just one thing.' Father Holmes looked down at the crushed dog end of Sherlock's cigarette where it lay in the road. 'I wouldn't leave that there if I were you. Those filters aren't biodegradable, you know, and some innocent little animal might come along and try to eat it.'

With an apologetic smile, Sherlock picked up and pocketed the cigarette stub but not before his father spotted the strapping on the back of his hand.

'What have you been up to?' asked Mr Holmes Senior.

'Oh, had an argument with a wall,' Sherlock shrugged. 'The wall won.'

Siger shook his head in mock despair as the two men set off walking along the lane.

'Well, what a rare treat this is,' said Siger. 'We don't get many visitors out here in the back of beyond. And that's not intended as a criticism. Your mother and I appreciate how busy you and your brother are.'

Despite his father's reassurance, Sherlock felt a pang of guilt. Both he and Mycroft had actively avoided visiting their parents for most of their adult lives; or rather, avoided visiting their mother, whom they found over bearing and extremely demanding. Sadly - and he had only recently come to realise this fact – their father had also missed out on the company of his sons, through no fault of his own. Sherlock thought he might try to make up for that in some way, in the future. But, right now, he had a task to fulfil and he'd best get on with it.

'I have a confession to make,' he began.

'Oh, dear. Nothing too terrible, I hope,' said Siger, warily.

'Well, I'll leave that for you to decide. The thing is, I highjacked you here in the lane because I want to talk to you on your own...about Eurus.'

'Oh.' Siger's face creased into a frown.

'Not about how she is now but about what she used to be like…before.'

'Before?'

'Yes, before Victor disappeared. You see, I don't remember her at all. And yet, I lived with her for five years before she was taken away…' He deliberately used the word 'taken' not 'sent'. '…so, the only Eurus I know is the current one. I'd really like to get to know young Eurus again. What was she like, as a little girl?'

Siger pursed his lips, considering how to respond to his son's request or perhaps even whether to respond at all but, to Sherlock's relief, he chose to co-operate.

'When Eurus was born, your mother and I were so delighted,' he began, wistfully. 'After two boys, it was lovely to have a little girl – not that we weren't thrilled to have you two, of course, but your mother and I were already in our forties and we thought we'd missed the boat when it came to having more children. We thought that about you, too, actually. In fact, both you and Eurus were menopause babies. Serendipitous, the pair of you,' he added. 'Anyway, you two, being so close in age, you were like twins, never apart. You did absolutely everything together…'

This didn't quite fit with what Eurus had told him but he had long since learned not to take anything as fact that any of the players in this drama had to say, except perhaps his father, who was the most honest man he'd ever known.

'Eurus told me she taught me to play the violin. Is that true?'

'Why, yes, now you come to mention it, she did!' Siger exclaimed. 'Eurus was always precocious. She just absorbed knowledge and information and skills, as if by osmosis. She only had to hear something once and she would remember it. Especially music. She was like a little Mozart. She picked up Mycroft's violin one morning and, by the end of the day, she could play all six of Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin, just from listening to them on the record player.'

'How old was she when she did this?' Sherlock asked.

'Three. She was three years old,' Siger's eyes misted over at the memory of little Eurus playing those six famous pieces. 'I mean, she wasn't perfect, of course. But she had the basic melodies and it wasn't long before she picked up the techniques, too. She used to try different things until it sounded right. And if there was any classical music on the TV, she would watch the violinists really closely and then pick up the violin and practice until she could do it just like them. Such a natural talent…'

'And she taught me to do it, too?'

'Well, she tried,' Siger chuckled. 'You weren't the quickest of studies. You were keen enough to have a go but your concentration span was sadly lacking. Let's say you were easily bored. And Eurus wasn't exactly patient. She used to say, 'But Sherlock, it's easy!' For her, perhaps. Yes, for Eurus, everything was easy.'

'And what was her behaviour like, then?'

'Her behaviour?'

'Yes, was she…odd?' He couldn't think of a more tactful way to put it.

'You mean apart from teaching herself the violin in a day? That's pretty odd, I'd say.'

'Yes, apart from that,' Sherlock replied, with a self-deprecating smile.

'Well, she used to get quite upset, sometimes, when we mere mortals didn't catch on quickly enough and she had quite a temper! But then, she was her mother's daughter. Mummy never could suffer fools gladly. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that she was odd. It must have been quite frustrating for her, living in a house full of idiots.'

'So, nothing that made you think she might do anything…'

'Like drowning another child in a well? No, nothing,' Siger almost whispered, shaking his head. There was such sadness in his tone and his demeanour, Sherlock reproached himself for being the cause of his father's distress but he had to push on with his line of questioning.

'Wasn't there an incident with a knife?'

'Oh, that?' his father huffed. 'That was nothing…well, no, not nothing obviously but it was just a misunderstanding. Your mother completely over-reacted and then your Uncle Rudi got involved…'

'Pa,' Sherlock interrupted, turning and placing his hands on his father's shoulders, 'what actually happened?'

Siger raised his hands in a gesture of apology and began again, at the beginning.

'Eurus was such a curious child…you all were but she had an insatiable thirst for knowledge. She always wanted to know how things worked and she used to watch me taking things apart – the lawnmower, car engines, the washing machine, old radios, that sort of thing – and putting them back together again. I used to give her a socket spanner or a wrench and let her have a go. She loved it!' He chuckled, fondly, at the memory.

'One day, the local gamekeeper gave us a brace of rabbits for the pot. I was gutting them on the kitchen table and Eurus was there, as usual, watching everything I did. And after I skinned the rabbits, she pointed to the leg muscles and asked me what they did, so I showed her on her own leg…you know, this muscle here is the same as this muscle here and you use it when you do this. And after I filleted the rabbits, I suppose I just got careless but, you see, I never thought anything of it. I put the knife down on the table and turned around to wash my hands…'

Siger stopped speaking and took a ragged breath. Sherlock placed a hand on his father's arm.

'I'm sorry, Pa. I don't mean to upset you…'

'No, no, son, it's not…I'm fine, really. Just being a silly old fool.' Siger forced a weak smile. 'This all happened such a long time ago but since you and Mycroft told us about Eurus being…well, you know, it brings it all back as if it was only yesterday.'

'You don't have to tell me what happened if you don't want to,' said Sherlock, suddenly feeling very protective of his father, a man in his eighties.

'No, no. It's good to talk,' Siger replied, gesturing for them to resume walking. 'Where did we get to? Oh, yes, I remember…I just turned around to wash my hands in the sink and when I turned back, Eurus had picked up the knife and was cutting into her arm. Well, I nearly died of shock! I shouted something, I don't know what…'Stop!' or 'Don't do that!'...something like that and I think that frightened her as much as the blood so she dropped the knife and screamed and…well, I managed to calm her down and we did all the First Aid stuff, you know the drill – apply pressure to the bleeding point, elevate the injury above the heart, all that kind of thing – and she was fine, actually. It wasn't a serious wound. But, of course, your mother heard all the kerfuffle and came running and when she saw all the blood from the rabbits, she thought it had all come out of Eurus so she had hysterics…it was quite funny, really, thinking about it now. Anyway, I learned my lesson. I never left any sharp objects where either you or Eurus could reach them, ever again.'

Another myth busted. This account of the incident with the knife was rather different to Mycroft's version but it did have a couple of elements in common. The 'how muscles work' was one, and his father's contention that shouting out had frightened Eurus as much as the blood - and perhaps also the pain? She may have been confused about which sensation frightened her the most. Sherlock felt the first pang of doubt about his contention that the conversation between Mycroft and Eurus had never happened but he was intrigued to know what part, if any, Mycroft had played in the incident itself. Was he even there?

'And how did Mycroft react? Did he have hysterics, too?' he asked, casually.

'Fortunately, your brother wasn't there. Neither were you, thank goodness. You were both at school when it happened, Myke away at Prep School and you at the local village school. Your Uncle Rudi was most upset when he found out, though.'

Sherlock experienced a palpable physical reaction, as though a cold hand gripped his heart, on hearing that name spoken by his father, who was still largely ignorant of the role played by his brother-in-law in the fate of his children.

But Siger was blissfully unaware of his son's discomfort and continued to relate the story.

'Your mother insisted on calling him. She relied on him so much, he was her 'rock', as people like to say these days. I told him there was no permanent damage to her arm and that everything was fine but he insisted on driving down that very evening to see for himself.'

'Why was he so interested in Eurus's arm?' asked Sherlock, fearing only sinister motives now that he knew the truth about Rudi's intentions toward his sister.

'He was paying for the violin lessons.'

'The what?'

'Oh, yes, I hadn't got that far, had I! Yes, well, when Uncle Rudi discovered what a gifted musician Eurus was, he insisted on paying for her to have violin lessons. He even found a teacher, up in London, and he used to take her to her lessons on a Saturday morning.'

The more Sherlock learned about how Rudi had insinuated himself into the lives of the Holmes family, the greater his anger grew. The man had not only groomed his brother, he'd groomed his parents, too. He had stolen two of their children right from under their noses and been thanked for doing so. Driven by his obsession with little Eurus, he must have planned the whole thing, like an MI6 operation and then carried it out, painstakingly. And he was clearly in it for the long game, having started when his 'asset' was only three years old. A thought occurred to Sherlock, a lightbulb moment but one so shocking, he actually gasped.

'Are you alright, my boy,' his father asked, most concerned.

'Yes, yes, sorry, Pa. I just…remembered I left the iron on. Never mind, I'm sure Mrs Hudson will have found it by now. Wouldn't want another fire in 221B Baker Street, would we? I think the insurance company might get a bit suspicious!' Shut up, you idiot, he rebuked himself. Only lies have detail.

But his father seemed to accept the blarney, never questioning for a moment that his youngest son might actually do his own laundry.

'Just one more thing, Pa, if you don't mind?' Sherlock asked.

'What's that, son?'

'Eurus told me that she never had any friends but, if we were so inseparable...?

'Oh, yes, I see where you're going with that,' Siger mused. 'Well, you were inseparable, right up until you started school.'

Ah, thought Sherlock. More data.

'When you turned four, just after Christmas, we enrolled you at the local village school - part time for the first term but, after Easter, you went fulltime. Eurus was like a little lost lamb when you weren't there. But, to be fair, you were the same on Saturdays when she went off for her violin lessons. That's why we started inviting Victor round...' Siger's features tightened at his mention of Victor's name but he pressed on. 'Yes, Victor was one of the village boys. You and he joined the school on the same day and you just hit it off, right away so we started inviting Victor round on Saturdays so you had someone to play with when Eurus wasn't there. But when he came over during the holidays, Eurus did feel rather left out. You two didn't do it on purpose but you were so wrapped up in your own games... So, yes, I can see why Eurus felt she didn't have any friends.'

Sherlock was silent, as his mind went through a myriad of 'what if' scenarios. This tragedy was so multi-layered. And hindsight is a wonderful thing.

'Smell that country air!' Siger exclaimed, breathing in deeply through flared nostrils. 'The farmer here uses chicken manure as fertilizer, delivered from a nearby egg farm. Which is doubly good for the environment since it utilises a natural by-product of another local industry whilst also keeping the road mileage to a minimum.'

'Fascinating,' said Sherlock, with a hint of irony, having been dragged from his reverie by this random fact.

'Unless the crop is oil seed rape, of course. Then he uses human manure or 'biosolids', as it's called - for the sake of the faint-hearted. It's sterilized to remove any biohazards, of course.'

'And why specifically for oil seed rape?' Sherlock was intrigued, now.

'Because the smell of human faeces deters the main crop pest, the cabbage stem flea beetle. They can't abide it.'

'Fascinating,' said Sherlock, again. And this time he actually meant it.

ooOoo

Many thanks to BBC Countryfile for the 'human manure/cabbage stem flea beetle' facts. Fascinating!